Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Recommended Website Monitoring Tools
-
Hi,
I was wondering what people would recommend for website monitoring (IE is my website working as it should!).
I need something that will:
1/. Allow multiple page monitoring not just homepage
2/. Do header status checking
3/. Do page content checking (ie if the page changes massively, or include the word "error") then we have an issue!
4/. Multiple alert possibilities.We currently use www.websitepulse.com and it is a good service that does all the above, however it just seems so overly complex that its hard to understand what is going on, and its complex functionality and features are really a negative in our case.
Thanks
-
We use Pingdom to monitor a lot of client websites. It is great, because we receive SMS messages when something is wrong. The detailed reporting, iPhone app and abilty to monitor http-statuses is exceptional!
-
Have not, but based on the service for free, it is likely worth a try given it is more robust. With most of our sites we do not have the level of complexity so it is less of a need. Hopefully, some of the mozzers with more eCommerce will see and respond. Also, if you have a private question available, you might use that to go straight to moz and see what they could suggest.
-
PS - I had a look at Mon.itor.us - have you tried their paid service: http://portal.monitis.com/ ??
-
Hi Rob,
Essentially we have a pretty complex website, with many different sections. This website is constantly being developed so there will probably be code releases for changes maybe 4-5 times per week. Any one of these changes may end up causing an issue with one of the pages (IE page of a specific type) . In addition to this we can get issues with DB or server memory which can occasional cause the website to fail.
All issues are pretty disastrous for business, so what I need to know (or to be more exact our developers need to know) as soon as an issue occurs (most of the attached services will check down all you to set a checking period of say every 5 mins) so it can be fixed (as opposed to waiting for a customer etc to tell us there is a website issue, or manually checking every page type with every code release).
As I say we do have websitepulse at the moment which is great, but also far to complex etc to easy set up and manage, so just doing research around this area, and seeing if anyone has some advice.
Thanks
-
Mon.itor.us works well and is free.
-
It seems you are looking for something that constantly monitors the site and simply alerts you to problems. From my point of view as an agency that has more than a few sites up, it might be overkill and I am not sure of what it would be. What we do to cover what you are listing is this: We have a pro plus moz membership and do campaign tracking with it. We can see on a weekly basis via email and daily if we just log in: 4xx, 5xx errors, dupe pg titles, missing pg titles, blocked bots, etc. as well as on page SEO issues, and general robots, rel - canon, etc.
For content checking of page changes I am at a loss, error reports as above and server downtime as below (mon.itor.us) with good result. The beauty of the SEOmoz campaign for me is that it also tracks rankings, connects to G Analytics, and provides competitive link analysis DA, PA, etc.
For the Headers you can use Screaming Frog (I just love that name and it works).
Hope that helps.
-
Doing some digging I found a useful list:
http://mashable.com/2010/04/09/free-uptime-monitoring/
Anyone have any feedback/reviews on these specific tools?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to prevent development website subdomain from being indexed?
Hello awesome MOZ Community! Our development team uses a sub-domain "dev.example.com" for our SEO clients' websites. This allows changes to be made to the dev site (U/X changes, forms testing, etc.) for client approval and testing. An embarrassing discovery was made. Naturally, when you run a "site:example.com" the "dev.example.com" is being indexed. We don't want our clients websites to get penalized or lose killer SERPs because of duplicate content. The solution that is being implemented is to edit the robots.txt file and block the dev site from being indexed by search engines. My questions is, does anyone in the MOZ Community disagree with this solution? Can you recommend another solution? Would you advise against using the sub-domain "dev." for live and ongoing development websites? Thanks!
Web Design | | SproutDigital0 -
What is the best way to handle annual events on a website?
Every year our company has a user conference with between 300 - 400 attendees. I've just begun giving the event more of a presence on our website. I'm wondering, what is the best way to handle highlights from previous years? Would it be to create an archive (e.g. www.companyname.com/eventname/2015) while constantly updating the main landing page to promote the current event? We also use an event website (cvent) to handle our registrations. So once we have an agenda for the current years event I do a temporary redirect from the main landing page to the registration website. I don't really like this practice and I feel like it might be better to keep all of the info on the main domain. Wondering if anybody has any opinions or feedback on that process as well. Just looking for best practices or what others have done and have had success with.
Web Design | | Brando161 -
Website Redesign and Migration to Squarespace killed my Ranking
My old website was dated, ugly, impossible to update and a mess between hard-coded pages and WP, but we were ranking #1 in the organic searches for our key words. I just redesigned my website using Squarespace. I kept most of the same text on the pages (for key words) and kept the same Meta-Tags and Title Tags for each page as much as possible. Once I was satisfied that I had done as much on-page optimization as I could, I changed the IP in our Domain Name Registry so that it would point to our new website on the Squarespace host. And our new website was live! ...Then I watched in dismay as our ranking fell into oblivion. I think this might have something to do with not doing any 301 redirects from the old website and losing all of my link juice. Is this the case? And, if so, how do I fix it? Our website url is www.kanataskinclinic.ca Thanks
Web Design | | StillLearning1 -
Spanish website indexed in English, redirect to spanish or english version if i do a new website design?
Hi MOZ users, i have this problem. We have a website in Spanish Language but Google crawls it on English (it is not important the reasons). We re made the entire website and now we are planning the move. The new website will have different language versions, english, spanish and portuguese. Somebody tells me that we have to redirect the old urls (crawled on english) to the new english versions, not to the spanish (the real language of the firsts). Example: URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language English version. the other option will be redirect to the spanish new version, which the visitor is waiting to find. URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language Spanish version. What do you think? Which is the better option?
Web Design | | NachoRetta0 -
New Website launch, asking for feedback
Hey Guys, I just launched my new website. I just asking around for feedback. Please check it out if you have time and let me know www.benjaminmarc.com
Web Design | | benjaminmarcinc1 -
Can anyone recommend a tool that will identify unused and duplicate CSS across an entire site?
Hi all, So far I have found this one: http://unused-css.com/ It looks like it identifies unused, but perhaps not duplicates? It also has a 5,000 page limit and our site is 8,000+ pages....so we really need something that can handle a site larger than their limit. I do have Screaming Frog. Is there a way to use Screaming Frog to locate unused and duplicate CSS? Any recommendations and/or tips would be great. I am also aware of the Firefix extensions, but to my knowledge they will only do one page at a time? Thanks!
Web Design | | danatanseo0 -
Does Google penalize duplicate website design?
Hello, We are very close to launching five new websites, all in the same business sector. Because we would like to keep our brand intact, we are looking to use the same design on all five websites. My question is, will Google penalize the sites if they have the same design? Thank you! Best regards,
Web Design | | Tiberiu
Tiberiu0 -
Need to rebuild client's flash website
I am working with their web designer and need to figure out a way to rebuild their site which is currently all in flash. I was wondering if there was a way to do this without spending a ton of time in completely re-doing the site from scratch.
Web Design | | awalker840